"All Self-Help Boils Down To One Truth" - Jimmy Carr (4K)

Jimmy Carr, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. I'm a, I'm a big fan of it. I'm kind of nervous about talking to you, in a weird way, because I like the show. I, I really like you as a kind of cultural, um, entity. I think it's a really interesting kinda journey you've had. And I get so much from this show. You know that phrase, I think you use it probably more than any other phrase, "Does it grow corn?" And for me, this show really kinda grows corn. There's so many little things that I've taken from this, that I've kind of gone, "Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do something with that." So kind of the, the practical application of the wisdom, what you get out of people seems to be, um, very easy to integrate into life.

Right, so the bar's been set high for you today then, if you start-

Yeah, I better-

... dicking around.

Well, I mean, dicking around is sort of what I do. So the other thing is like, I, I kinda get more nervous being myself than being sort of the comedic, um, persona. The, you know, just being funny.

Mm.

Just being on things, being funny, I find very easy. It's a, it's an interesting sort of life lesson, the idea of like, what do you find easy that other people find difficult? Go for that. Do that for a living. That's, that's ... there's, there's gonna be money there, there's gonna be (laughs) , there's gonna be some gold. You're gonna be okay. If you find it easy and everyone else is going, "That's impossible," so you're standing up in front of people being funny, I find very easy. Like, these kind of conversations, I slightly, you slightly second-guess yourself.

It's what you're used to, I think. It's what you spend a lot of time becoming acclimatized to doing.

Yeah, I suppose. Uh, you know, it's just that thing of, I've always said in comedy, people sort of talk about how many years they've been doing comedy, and it seems faintly ridiculous. It's kind of, it's like when you talk to an airline pilot, they've got a really good view on it, they talk about how many hours they've got in the sky. And for me, like, there's no substitute for, um, stage time. And I'm sure for you, there's no substitute for, for this, for actually doing it. Everything else is, is kind of, uh, uh, doesn't matter how many years you've had a podcast. I think something about the frequency of your show as well.

Mm-hmm.

It's the, it's kind of, it's always there. There's always something new.

You talk about the most important question to ask yourself being, what do you want?

Yeah, I mean, I talk about that an awful lot. I, I studied a lot of, uh, studied and was very interested in sort of NLP, and that question of what do you want, in the micro, in the macro, being, um, being the absolute key in sort of life. Because people sort of, um, I suppose it's, it's, it's that thing of going, what does something represent? Peop- someone might say, "Well, I want a Ferrari." Um, but why? If you, if you sort of dig a little deeper, you can't just ask once, "What do you want?" "Well, I want a Ferrari and a Rolex and all of the trappings," but actually what they want is status. So it's kind of asking yourself, what game are you gonna play?